Fallow

All of this—
these windowless warehouses,  
these factories made, seemingly, 
of styrofoam;  
these used-car prairies 
that glare pink in the sunset.  
All of this used to be fields.  
Just ten years ago 
there was a cabin, there, 
made of rain-darkened wood,  
roof caving in, 
half rotten, 
clung over with moss, 
and there was a wagon wheel 
rusting out front, 
laid sideways in the grass,  
and there was a water trough,  
long-filled with dirt and weeds, 
dandelions and geranium 
and pink-white mallows, 
and the crows liked to sit there 
perched on the cold metal 
pecking at the soil and the old grass,  
plucking petals from the gnarled, red rose bush 
and eating fermented pears 
that still grew, stunted,  
next to the old clothesline. 
It is gone, now. All of it. Gone. 
The crows sit instead 
on parking lot railings, 
remembering 
the way it was, then,  
when the earth was allowed 
to calm itself; 
to grow itself fallow.